A$AP Rocky trial brings clashing closing arguments over gun as Rihanna brings tiny sons to court

LOS ANGELES (AP) — With Rihanna and two toddlers looking on from the audience, a prosecutor at the trial of A$AP Rocky told jurors during his closing argument Thursday that they have “one critical question” to answer.

“Was it a real gun or was it a fake gun?” Deputy District Attorney Paul Przelomiec said. “Nothing else is in dispute.”

Both sides gave their answers during closings at the Los Angeles trial, where the hip-hop star is accused of firing at a former friend on a Hollywood street in 2021.

Przelomiec argued that Rocky was undeniably guilty of two felony counts of assault with a semiautomatic firearm.

The defense says the gun was a prop that fires only blanks that Rocky took for security months earlier from the set of his music video for “DMB,” which featured Rihanna.

Rocky's lawyer Joe Tacopina said the accuser and key prosecution witness is “an angry pathological liar” who “committed perjury again and again and again and again."

Rocky, the Grammy-nominated music star, fashion mogul and actor whose legal name is Rakim Athelaston Mayers, is the longtime partner of singing superstar Rihanna, who has attended the trial sporadically. For the first time, she brought their two sons — 2-year-old RZA Athelston Mayers and 1-year-old Riot Rose Mayers — entering the courtroom quietly but dramatically a few minutes into closings.

The boys, wearing suits, could be heard cooing as the prosecutor talked. Rihanna held one on her lap and tried to keep him quiet with a toy. During a break, Rocky walked down the hall, past jurors, holding the younger boy. Rihanna returned to court without them after lunch.

The defense will complete its closing argument on Friday. After a rebuttal from prosecutors, jurors will begin deliberations.

Rocky could get up to 24 years in prison if convicted.

The jurors are not supposed to know the possible sentence. But during testimony, Rocky's tour manager, Lou Levin, said, "I read that he was facing 24 years," after a prosecutor hounded him about whether he wanted to see his friend and sometime boss convicted.

In his closing, Przelomiec said it was intentional.

Rocky and the man he's accused of shooting, who goes by A$AP Relli, became friends in high school in New York. Both were members of a crew of creative types called the A$AP Mob.

Their friendship continued after Rocky gained global fame with No. 1 albums in 2012 and 2013, but by Nov. 6, 2021, their bond had become a beef.

They met up outside a Hollywood hotel and scuffled. In a second confrontation moments later, Rocky fired the shots. Relli said his knuckles were grazed by one of them.

Tacopina called the injury “knuckle scrapes."

“There's no bullet in the world that could've done that,” Tacopina said, showing jurors a picture of Relli's hand.

A$AP Twelvyy, a friend who was with Rocky, testified that Rocky fired the shots as a warning to stop Relli from attacking another member of their crew, A$AP Illz.

The moment was captured on blurry surveillance video, leaving it open to interpretation. It shows Relli holding Illz in front of him.

The prosecution argues that Rocky moves forward in an attempt to get a clear shot at Relli that wouldn't hit Illz.

“They would have you believe that Rocky shot a real gun at his friend Illz, who was right there," Tacopina countered. “That makes no sense.”

Twelvyy and Levin testified that Rocky fired blanks from a prop gun that everyone involved knew he carried. Both were clearly coached and coordinated, Przelomiec said.

“What they got on the stand and told you were lies,” he said.

The prosecutor said Rocky even coached Twelvyy live in court, when the witness was asked what the initials AWGE — the name of Rocky's creative agency and record label — stand for.

“Don't say it!” Rocky, who doggedly keeps the answer secret, shouted.

Tacopina said the defense witnesses were consistent and poised, unlike the petulant and backpedaling accuser.

“They didn’t get tripped up once,” the lawyer told jurors. “Because the truth is easy to remember.”

Neither side produced a gun as evidence.

“There is literally no evidence of a prop gun," the prosecutor said.

Tacopina countered that “there’s definitely a lot less evidence of a real gun.”

Relli also sued Rocky, whose attorneys cast Relli as a jealous opportunist. In phone calls recorded by a mutual friend who gave the recordings to Rocky, Relli said he was going to take Rocky for millions.

“If Relli had gotten his 30 million,” Tacopina said, “there would be no witness in this case."

Relli testified the calls, introduced into evidence by the defense, were faked, but the prosecution played long excerpts during closings to point out what Relli said on them was “exactly what he told you here in court.”

“Mr. Ephron wants to get paid,” Przelomiec said, “because he was the victim of a real crime.”

A$AP Rocky stands in court during closing arguments in his trial Thursday, Feb. 13, 2025, in Los Angeles. (Allison Dinner/Pool Photo via AP)

A$AP Rocky listens to closing arguments during his trial Thursday, Feb. 13, 2025, in Los Angeles. (Allison Dinner/Pool Photo via AP)

Judge Mark S. Arnold presides over closing arguments in the trial of A$AP Rocky, Thursday, Feb. 13, 2025, in Los Angeles. (Allison Dinner/Pool Photo via AP)

Attorney Joe Tacopina speaks during closing arguments in the trial of A$AP Rocky, Thursday, Feb. 13, 2025, in Los Angeles. (Allison Dinner/Pool Photo via AP)

A$AP Rocky listens to closing arguments during his trial Thursday, Feb. 13, 2025, in Los Angeles. (Allison Dinner/Pool Photo via AP)

Singer Rihanna, center, returns to Clara Shortridge Foltz Criminal Justice Center in Los Angeles on Friday, Jan. 31, 2025. (AP Photo/Liam McEwan)

Singer Rihanna leaves Clara Shortridge Foltz Criminal Justice Center in Los Angeles on Friday, Jan. 31, 2025. (AP Photo/Liam McEwan)

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump said he’s dropping — for now — his push to deploy National Guard troops in Chicago, Los Angeles and Portland, Oregon, a move that comes after legal roadblocks held up the effort.

“We will come back, perhaps in a much different and stronger form, when crime begins to soar again - Only a question of time!" he said in a social media post Wednesday.

Governors typically control states' National Guardsmen, and Trump had deployed troops to all three cities against the wishes of state and local Democratic leaders. He said it was necessary as part of a broader crackdown on immigration, crime and protests.

The president has made a crackdown on crime in cities a centerpiece of his second term — and has toyed with the idea of invoking the Insurrection Act to stop his opponents from using the courts to block his plans. He has said he sees his tough-on-crime approach as a winning political issue ahead of next year’s midterm elections.

Troops had already left Los Angeles after the president deployed them earlier this year as part of a broader crackdown on crime and immigration.

In his post, Trump said the troops' presence was responsible for a drop in crime in the three cities, though they were never on the streets in Chicago and Portland as legal challenges played out. When the Chicago deployment was challenged in court, a Justice Department lawyer said the Guard’s mission would be to protect federal properties and government agents in the field, not “solving all of crime in Chicago.”

Portland Mayor Keith Wilson’s office in a statement said the city’s reduction in crime was due to the efforts of local police and public safety programs. Chicago officials echoed the sentiment, saying in a release Tuesday that the city had 416 homicides in 2025 — the fewest since 2014.

Trump’s push to deploy the troops in Democrat-led cities has been met with legal challenges at nearly every turn.

The Supreme Court in December refused to allow the Trump administration to deploy National Guard troops in the Chicago area. The order was not a final ruling but was a significant and rare setback by the high court for the president’s efforts.

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker wrote on X Wednesday that Trump “lost in court when Illinois stood up against his attempt to militarize American cities with the National Guard. Now Trump is forced to stand down.”

Hundreds of troops from California and Oregon were deployed to Portland, but a federal judge barred them from going on the streets. A judge permanently blocked the deployment of National Guard troops there in November after a three-day trial.

Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek said in a statement Wednesday that her office had not yet received “official notification that the remaining federalized Oregon National Guard troops can return home. They were never lawfully deployed to Portland and there was no need for their presence. If President Trump has finally chosen to follow court orders and demobilize our troops, that’s a big win for Oregonians and for the rule of law.”

Trump's decision to federalize National Guard troops began in Los Angeles in June, when protesters took to the streets in response to a blitz of immigration arrests in the area. He deployed about 4,000 troops and 700 Marines to guard federal buildings and, later, to protest federal agents as they carried out immigration arrests.

The number of troops slowly dwindled until just several hundred were left. They were removed from the streets by Dec. 15 after a lower court ruling that also ordered control to be returned to Gov. Gavin Newsom. But an appeals court had paused the second part of the order, meaning control remained with Trump. In a Tuesday court filing, the Trump administration said it was no longer seeking a pause in that part of the order.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit on Wednesday ordered the Trump administration to return control of the National Guard to Newsom.

“About time (Trump) admitted defeat,” Newsom said in a social media post. “We’ve said it from day one: the federal takeover of California’s National Guard is illegal.”

Troops will remain on the ground in several other cities. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in December paused a lower court ruling that had called for an end to the deployment of National Guard troops in Washington, D.C., where they’ve been deployed since August after Trump declared a “crime emergency.”

Trump also ordered the deployment of the Tennessee National Guard to Memphis in September as part of a larger federal task force to combat crime, a move supported by the state’s Republican Gov. Bill Lee and senators. A Tennessee judge blocked the use of the Guard, siding with Democratic state and local officials who sued. However, the judge stayed the decision to block the Guard as the state appeals, allowing the deployment to continue.

In New Orleans, about 350 National Guard troops deployed by Trump arrived in the city's historic French Quarter on Tuesday and are set to stay through Mardi Gras to help with safety. The state's Republican governor and the city's Democratic mayor support the deployment.

Ding reported from Los Angeles. Associated Press reporters John O'Connor in Springfield, Illinois, Becky Bohrer in Juneau, Alaska, Jack Brook in New Orleans and Adrian Sanz in Memphis contributed.

FILE - A protester confronts a line of U.S. National Guard members in the Metropolitan Detention Center of downtown Los Angeles, Sunday, June 8, 2025. (AP Photo/Eric Thayer, File)

FILE - Protesters stand off against California National Guard soldiers at the Federal Building in downtown Los Angeles, during a "No Kings" protest, June 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Richard Vogel, File)

President Donald Trump speaks during a news conference with Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at Mar-a-Lago, Monday, Dec. 29, 2025, in Palm Beach, Fla. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)